Ohio Breweries by Rick Armon

Zaftig Brewing Co. and Crimson Cup Coffee & Tea have announced that the two Columbus businesses have teamed up to create BamBaLam Breakfast Stout. The beer features bittersweet chocolate and Crimson Cup’s Ethiopian Sidamo Kellenso coffee.

"As a small-batch brewery, we can't make enough to keep up with the crazy demand for this beer right now," Zaftig Co-owner Jim Gokenbach said in a news release.

BamBaLam is available for a limited time at the Ohio Tap Room and at Zaftig. About 20 gallons of BamBaLam will be kept for the Zaftig taproom and The World of Beer Easton location, the release says. The remaining 80 gallons will be aged in bourbon barrels from a local distillery.

-- Drink Up Columbus reports that BrewDog co-founder James Watt posted the following question on Twitter: Does Columbus, Ohio need a BrewDog US brewery? To read the full post, click here.

-- What's On Tap reports on the Irish craft brewing scene and mentions brewmaster Joe Kearns, who moved from Ohio to Ireland to help launch White Hag Irish Brewing Co. To read the full story, click here.

“When we started this 3 1/2 years ago, it was a different craft beer world," festival director Craig Johnson, who also organizes the Cincy, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia Beerfests, said in a prepared statement. "Heck, we had 25 stouts that year but only two were from local breweries. This year, there are 13 incredible stouts from Tri-State breweries (Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky) and that’s pretty cool. This is just a really fun event. It’s fun for us to do small intimate event compared to our large fests across the state. The stouts are some of the harder to find and include the Goose Island Bourbon County Stout that isn’t legal to sell in Ohio."

VIP tickets are $30 and get you a reserved sampling of four sought-after beers: Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Founders KBS, Three Floyds Blot Out the Sun Stout and 2013 Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Stout.

-- The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram reports that The Brew Kettle is looking to open a bar in Amherst. To read the full story, click here.

-- The Toledo Free Press prewiews the ninth annual Glass City Beer Fest. “The growth the Glass City Beer Festival has experienced since its inception has been amazing,” Black Cloister Breiwng CEO Tom Schaeffer says. “It’s really a sizable festival at this point. It just shows that there is a growing craft beer culture in this area and that makes it very exciting for us to be a part of that and being a new brewery in the area. We have a starving public out there right now.” To read the full story, click here.

Rhinegeist Brewery will celebrate the return of Saber Tooth Tiger, its imperial IPA, with a launch party at noon March 7. In addition to being available on draft, the beer will be released in 22-ounce bombers.

The Cincinnati brewery said there will be a limit of two bottles per person. There also will be no growlers or howlers of Saber Tooth sold.